must withdraw from Tripartite Talks

What is the solution to the economic crisis? According to the news media, the politicians, the employers, and the leaders of the trade union moveMent, the answer is simple:

"NATIONAL PARTNERSHIP".

The trade union leadership has been selling this idea to the rank and file with promises of maintaining real living standards while curbing money wages: of cradually but genuinely increasing social welfare benefits and social services: of greater employment the public Government and Social Development" (published at the end an outline aboration over the next four years -has shattered the credibility of the trade union bureaucrats and their promises. The Green Paper reveals that neither the Government nor the employers consider any of these objectives to La) According to the Green Paper unit wage costs (i.e. wages measured against productivity) are projected to rise by only 1&2 in the mext four years. This contrasts with an increase of 76% over the last four years. Since there are no plans for major increases in productivity (i.e. re-equiping and mdernisation of industry), this lowering of unit wage costs can only come about through drastic and fundamental reductions in workers’

living standards. through the expansion of sector of the economy, The Green Paper on “Economic of September) - supposedly of the framework for collbe desirable or realistic.

PROFITS b) The Green Paper commits the GovernMent against further increases in social welfare benefits. For the past three years there has been mo rise in the real value of social welfare benefits, The Green Paper says that this policy of restraint will continue until at least 198). But there is already plenty of evidence that the Government actually intends to gut the value of welfare benefits. Almost on the same day the Green Paper was published the Government reneged on its com mittment to the ICTU to increase welfare benefits to compensate for the 6% prices hike over the past three months. The cost to the Govermment would be £5million out of a total budget of £1.7billion. Thus the Government's intransigence springs not from economic considerations (which are minor) but from a desire to set the right tenor for the next four years.

Gc) According to the Green Paper the only means of expanding the public sector = taxation and borrowing - are already exhausted (the value of taxes and the value of Govermment debt equals a quarter and one-sixth, respectively, of the value of everything produced in the country). Thus the Government sees it as a priority to halt the expansion of the public sector and if possible cut it back. Two days after the publication of the Green Paper, while the ICTU leaders were still pretending that an expansion of the public sector was negotiable, the Taoiseach issued @ Statement emphasising the need to curb the public sector.

The Green Paper 1s not in any sense & plan for social and economic development. Nor do the Government and employers have any such plan. The trade union leaders are simply trying to lull workers into a false sense of security by pretending otherwise, Workers don't have to look far beyond their supposed leaders to discover that the only plans of the Government and employers is to reestablish the profitability of Irish capitalism at the expense of the workers. An Irish Times edi’ up the Green Paper unimpressive docum dourly dished out ; oft-rejected gruel oured With a few c cial editor also d@ a5 just sc much wa had one realistic | signs", he said, " accepts that the d the last three yea the present econom it aims to revive . taxes and holding | profits and invest But the Green Pape! cut wages: it is @ ally to divert resi ial needs and chan ets of the private the economy, On th ment has committed the present policy the mul tinationals Natural Resources no job target has or). On the other lons-are planned f with huge grants o already being give ustry.

TRADE UNION POLICY The bureaucratic 1 union Movement mus deliver the workin est trap. It is tr ICTU conference { epted the interim powered the Congre tripartite negotia ment and employers rank and file were that such negotiat jectives which wer IcTU policy.

Now it is quite ap the other two "soc contradict trade w of important areas case in the area o Congress is firmly expansion of the p Bress executive ne outside their mand whether the public anded at all.

The Congress neeot no basis for conti talks. The executi blatantly flauntinj not withdrawing im cussions. Nor is Employer-Labour Coy ive. The truth is and economic plan essary now is that) Ment open a broad Sion within its rs the essential ¢lem action programme tf blems such as redu is also needed,

Qn Tuesday September 14th Kieran Nugent, a 19-year-old from the Lower Falls area of Belfast, was sentenced to three years imprisonment. His crime was opposition to the rule of British Since March 1972 all republicans convicted in the rigged courts of the North have been recognised as political prisoners by the British Government. But since Kieran's so-called 'crime' was committed after March lst of this year, he has Unlike his comrades also cénfined in Long Kesh, Kieran is denied the company of other republican prisoners. Instead, he is held in solitary confinement in the newly constructed Cell Block H. For the past four weeks Kieran has lain in his eell with only a rough blanket to cover himself, with no mattress during the day, only a bible for reading material: for refusing to Wear prison clothing, the Sept 27) summed ows: "It is an Government has repeated and restraint flayns." The finan| the document i noted that it "For there are | Government n profits in i reason for ts8ion and that ' by lowering fes, 80 that both and.” (Sept 27) tonly a plan to lan systematicfrom urgent soctinte the pockrise sector of and the Govern— to continuing ordination to vital sphere of ibly, absolutely t for this sectee tax concess— stry, combined cale of those w foreign indof the trade e allowed to inte this latthe special ept) which acccement also em utive to enter ith the Governhe trade union the impression uld concern obly in line with that the goals of tners" totally licy in a number is especially the c enterprise. ‘ted to A massive ector. The Conrs are going way even discussing ‘should be exphave obviously he tripartite ongress is ess policy by ly from the dismption of the @ the alternat-— genuine social ed. What is necade union moveocratic discuswhat should be ‘such a plan. An tt immediate pro§ and. inflation Imperialism in Ireland: Kieran is a republican.

been refused political status.

prison administration has prohibited all visits, even from his mother.

POLITICAL STRUGGLE The conditions under which Kieran is imprisoned show dramatically the determinat— jon of the British Labour Government to break the morale of republican prisoners, to isolate and intimidate them. Unless this attempt ta remove political status is beaten, then in the coming months Many More young men and women will find themselves prisoners in similar harrowing conditions.

Political status was won only after a long and bitter struggle including a j7day hunger-strike by 40 republican prisoners in 1972. It represented a major gain for the anti-imperialist movement and a humiliating defeat for British Imperialism. The latter had been forced to admit that those whom it had labelled ‘gangsters’ and ‘murderers’ were in fact engaged in a political struggle to end Imperialist rule.

For the prisoners themselves it was No mean achievement, as it allowed them to escape from the boring drudgery of prison routine. They were able to maintain their own organisation within the barbed wire, to hold political discussions, and thus contribute to the development of the struggle outside. DEFENCE CAMPAIGN Now once again the British Government is trying to 'criminalise’ the struggle in the 6-Counties, to regain the ground it has lost. If successful, it will mean the isolation of the prisoners within the camps and also the isolation of the resistance outside. This achieved, British Imperialism would then meet very few obstacles in achieving its singular purpose - to force the nationalist population of the 6-Counties back onto its knees.

The importance of defending political status should therefore not need to be stressed, But even now, when the first prisoner has been sentenced and deprived of political status, some org— anisations continue to ignore it, continwe to sit back like political ostriches seeing nothing, saving nothing, and doing nothing. Prime examples are the Official Republican organisation and the Commnist Party of Ireland. This is yet further proof, if further proof 15 at this stage of the struggle still required, that these organisations have nothing to offer the Irish working class. METHODS.

There can be no doubt that just as the winning of political status required hard and long struggle 60 also its defence will be no easy matter. Indeed, amongst those supporting the Relatives Action Committee which is organising the defence campaign, there are those who feel that the campaign canneat succeed, The answer to such doubts lies in the successful protests mounted on August &th/9th which attracted over 10,000 supporters. But this required patient explanation of the issue, the slow building of pickets on Army/RUC barracks, small meetings in the different ghettoes, the collection of Several thousand signatures for the petition launched by Peoples Democracy. A slow process, without quick results, without newspaper headlines - but the only method that will ever pay off.

To threaten prison officers, workers in Army barracks, and so on, as the Provisional IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army are doing is seen as an admission that these forces cannot mobilise support on the streets. Thus they add to the credibility of 'anti-Provo' propaganda and the Peace Movement, who at this particular point of time are able to mount impressive street demonStrations. There is no short-cut to winning back the confidence of antiunionist workers.

RESISTANCE’

Inside the prisens the fight has started back. Kieran Nugent is adamant in his refusal to accept the removal of political status. But the fight that he has undertaken is not any easy one, As Dolours Price wrote from her cell in Armagh Gaol - "It is a fight that will be Won only with the combined co ‘2. and determination of the prisoners and the lovalty and dedicatio al cerned people."

Resistance within the prisons will mean harsh retaliation from the prison screws and British soldiers stationed in the prisons unless there is a mass movement on the outside fighting for the control of our streets. We must stand together for we will surely fall together if Britain is allowed to get its way. While Kieran Nugent lies naked in H Block, Long Kesh, none of us are free, DEFEND POLITICAL STATUS!

RE-BUILD THE MASS RESISTANCE!

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